DETECTIVE IN NEW YORK VS. DRUG LORD IN COLOMBIA

Six months ago, gunmen on a rural road in northwest Colombia pulled a
legislator from his car near a small cattle town where he was planning
to run for mayor. A short time later, he was shot and killed along
with his sister and their driver.

Two years earlier, in a neighboring province, government investigators
uncovered a shallow grave that held the bodies of four slain community
activists, all of them showing signs of torture.

The political killings, Colombian investigators and human rights
groups say, are among hundreds ordered by a powerful right-wing
paramilitary leader, Diego Fernando Murillo, who controls a swath of
northwestern cattle country and is responsible for much of the cocaine
that winds up on New York's streets.

But the criminal case that may stand the best chance of bringing him
to justice has its roots 2,500 miles away. It began two years ago in
New York City with a police detective, John Barry, who was not even
sure what a paramilitary leader was when he first heard the name Don
Berna, as Mr. Murillo is known.

As a result of Detective Barry's work and the efforts of a team of
federal prosecutors in Manhattan, Mr. Murillo is under indictment on
narcotics conspiracy charges and faces extradition to New York, a
possibility that could put him in prison for life.

An intense compact man with a shaved head and a trim red goatee,
Detective Barry spent most of his police career in blue jeans and work
boots, chasing drug dealers through the streets of Harlem and
Washington Heights. But in 2003 he was assigned to a task force
working with federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents and the
state police, and set his sights considerably higher.

There, working with a team of prosecutors whose mission is to hunt the
world's 50 biggest narcotics traffickers, Detective Barry has taken
what amounts to a crash course in international law and diplomacy, as
well as in Colombia's murky, violent conflict.

"It was definitely an eye opener," the detective, 35, said in a recent
interview. "I learned quickly. Obviously, coming in, I knew we
extradited people from Colombia, but I had no idea of what was
involved." He added, "But I got a very fast education."

The detective first heard about Mr. Murillo from an informant in March
2003 and opened the case, he said. He soon found himself traveling to
Colombia - he made four trips in two years - interviewing witnesses
about shady international deals, and reviewing dense bank and shipping
records.

He learned that Mr. Murillo had once been a henchman for Pablo
Escobar, who until his death in 1993 was known as Colombia's
pre-eminent cocaine lord. Mr. Murillo, after turning on Mr. Escobar,
took over that kingpin's drug routes and his far-flung business
empire, Detective Barry said. He said he also found out how the
paramilitary commander's operations were felt close to home, in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Colombian cocaine shipped by Mr. Murillo's
organization was the foundation of a booming drug business in a crack
house on Stuyvesant Street until police and D.E.A. agents shut it down
in January.

"He's probably one of the bigger traffickers in the world, and he's a
very, very evil man," Mr. Barry said.

Indeed, Mr. Murillo so stands out for his cruelty and cunning that
Colombia's largest newspaper nicknamed him the Exterminator.

Well aware of the charges against him, Mr. Murillo, 44, a large, heavy
man who walks with a noticeable limp after surviving an assassination
attempt, is unrepentant. Through a spokesman, he recently declined to
answer questions. But in an interview with The New York Times in
November on a ranch in northern Colombia, he called accusations of
drug trafficking and murder completely false.

Government and human rights investigators call him an influential
commander in the country's right-wing paramilitary army, an illegal
force of 15,000 men that has killed thousands of Colombians in its
brutal war against leftist rebels.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials say the organization, the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, is believed to traffic most of
Colombia's cocaine, and the United States Treasury Department has
listed 16 of its commanders as drug kingpins. The State Department has
also listed the organization as a foreign terrorist group.

Colombian prosecutors have already charged Mr. Murillo with the murder
of the mayoral candidate, Orlando Benitez, and investigators have tied
his forces to dozens of other crimes.